‘Do You Do Anything Else?’

Over the weekend, ne had appeared in vigorous health. He was 27 years old, left‐handed pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, a little heavy at 215 pounds, but enjoying himself in the off season on a snowmobile, thumping across the drifts on the pastures and trails not far from his Duluth, Minn., home. But on Monday morning, he was sitting at the kitchen table, having break‐fast with his wife and two small children, sip ping coffee, when it be gan.

“I had this real pres sure on my chest,” John Hiller recalled. “And pains up and down both arms.”

He was having a heart attack, but he didn't realize it, Or maybe he didn't want to realize it.

“I didn't know what it was,” he was saying before the Tigers went to Oakland for their American League playoff series. “I didn't think it was a heart attack be cause it didn't knock me out. I didn't even call a doctor right away. I waited about five hours. The heaviness in my chest had gone away, but the pains in the arms stayed, so my wife called our family doctor.”

Quickly, he was rushed to St. Luke's Hospital, and placed in the coronary care unit.

“They had me strung up with electrodes, the whole thing,” he said. “But they didn't tell me for about four days that I'd had a heart attack. I stayed there five weeks. I kept asking them when I could pitch again, but the specialist there was very skeptical. He kept asking me, ‘Do you do anything else?’ meaning if I had an other job. But baseball was all I knew. I'd quit school in Toronto after the 11th grade. I hadn't done anything else but play ball.”

After seven seasons in the minor leagues, John Hiller stuck with the Tigers in 1967. He helped them win the World Series the next season. Until his heart attack on Jan. 11, 1971, his career won lost record with the Tigers was an ef ficient 23‐19, mostly as a relief pitcher.

“Last year, naturally, I didn't, play at all. I had to go back into the hospital for surgery. They took out seven feet of in testines to lower my cholesterol content, to dissolve the cholesterol deposits in my arteries. My weight went down to 175 after the operation, but, I felt good. I was running and swimming and playing paddle ball. I had a job selling furniture, but wanted to go to spring training with the Tigers this year but the front office was wary.”

Tiger front office remembered the headlines a few months earlier when Chuck Hughes, wide receiver for the De troit Lions of the National Football League, died on the field at Tiger Stadium after collapsing with a heart attack.

“The front office was afraid of them selves, I think,” he said. “They had me come to Detroit to Ford Hospital for check‐up, and they also sent me out to the University of Michigan Hospital at Ann Arbor for another examination. There was a difference of opinion. I don't know which one said what, but one said they thought I could get back into baseball, and the other said, ‘definitely no.’ I don't know which said ‘no,’ I wish I did. But the Tigers were willing to let me go to spring training as an instructor of minor league. pitchers, not as a player.”

He remained in Florida when the Tigers opened their season, but by late May, he rejoined them as a batting‐practice pitcher.

“I didn't know Billy Martin well, he took over as manager the year I was out, but in spring training, he told me, ‘If you're well and able to pitch, we need you on the ball club.’ After he watched me pitch bat ting practice a few times, he liked the way I was throwing. He told Art Fowler, the pitching coach, that I had a better arm than two or three guys on our staff. So he activated me.”

Billy Martin's Choice

Not that John Hiller suddenly was a sensation. As the Tigers approached the last weekend in their battle for the Ameri can League East title, he had appeared in 23 games, but had pitched only 35 innings, mostly in relief. He had failed to complete either of his two starts. His won‐lost record was 0‐2.

“But a week ago Friday,” he said, “Billy told me that I was going to start the Sunday game against the Milwaukee. Brewers. I figured that he'd want a left hander to go against them but I figured it would be Fred Scherman. He had a 7‐3 record, so when Billy told me, I was sur prised. It took guts for him to pick me.

Hiller not only won, 5‐1, but he also lasted nine innings, preserving the Tigers' staff for the decisive series with the Bos ton Red Sox that followed. It was his only victory of the season, recalling a Tiger pitcher named Floyd Giebell, whose only victory in 1940 clinched the pennant. Ex cept that John Hiller's only victory was merely a symbol of his real victory.